He had done it.
The camp was his. Every soldier left to defend it lay dead, and their bodies would be waiting to welcome the army home when it finally came marching back. One small gift in exchange for everything they were about to take.
Alpheo stood in the middle of it with a dead man's sword hanging from his hand.He had never trained with steel of course, as what manner of skill could a layman have with swords or axes?But he could not deny that a certain sense of confidence swelled with him as his fingers clenched on the hilt of the bloodied weapon.
The slaves around him watched him expectantly. Word had travelled during the fighting, as word always does, and by now every one of them knew that the boy standing there was the mind behind the whole thing.
He glanced over his shoulder and a smile spread across his face at the sight of Egil coming back toward him, whole and walking. That mattered more to him than the camp did.Better yet he saw horses trail behind.
Still, the question remained: what now?
For all the apparent success of their rising, Alpheo knew perfectly well they were not yet clear of danger. Victory tasted sweet enough, but it was tempered by the knowledge that their freedom was a very small flame standing in a very great deal of wind.
It was nothing but a house of cards built on a wobbly table, one small tremor and everything would come crashing down.
The army could return at any hour. If they were still here when it did, everything they had done this morning would have bought them nothing but a worse death.
As he walked he recognised a few faces in the crowd. Among the dead, that is, rather than the living. None of them brought back anything fond, only the old grievances, the old scores. Then his eyes settled on a particularly rotund shape sprawled in the dirt ahead of him.
"Well. If it isn't Madam Virvana," he muttered, crouching for a better look.
She was thoroughly dead. Eyes gone glassy, body still, that famous scowl finally at rest. Alpheo had always prided himself on not holding grudges against the dead, and found, examining himself honestly, that he was making an exception today.
With a sly little smile he raised his leg and gave her a swift kick in the stomach, and a laugh escaped him at the way the rolls shifted with the impact.
I once heard of an emperor in some far country whose corpse burned in the street for three whole days, he mused. Or was it a general? I wonder whether we might set a new record here.
He turned the thought over, decided against it, and left her where she lay. He had a great deal more important work waiting, and revenge, he had learned long ago, keeps very poorly compared to bread.
Better safe than sorry.
He raised the sword high above his head, and when he spoke his voice carried an authority that surprised even him.
"Brothers!" It rang out across the camp. "The camp is ours! We have taken it, and with it we have taken back our freedom!"
A surge of cheering answered him, hundreds of fists thrust up at the sky.
"But do not grow comfortable in the laurels of our success," he continued, and the cheering thinned. "Our masters may return at any moment with the whole army at their backs. We must be quick, and we must be sharp."
A short silence followed. A few men gulped their fear down where they stood. He knew they were frightened. Hell, he was frightened as well. But he could not show a crack of it, so he stood there and was stone for them.
"We leave this place and we build our lives elsewhere. Alone, any one of us is a dead man walking. Together, we are something no patrol will care to chase. You have one hour to strip this camp. Food and coin come first, before anything that shines. Search the tents and take clothing to knot into bags for carrying. Whatever you find, shout it out and share it with your brothers.
And do not be greedy. What use is silver to a man who dies before he can spend it?Will you buy a comfortable chair to sit on while the flames of hell bites at your feet? The same goes for weapons. If you find them, put them into the hands of the men beside you. We will all want them soon enough.
And any man or woman you come across, leave them be, or kill them if they come at you. We have no time for games of lust. None of us knows when those soldiers come back through that gate seeking to plunge us in the chains we just broke out of. Now go!"
The slaves sprang into motion with a vigour that had not been in any of them an hour ago. In truth they would have looted the camp regardless of whether he had said a word. The difference was that now they would do it quickly, and would not linger over it.
"Clio! Find Egil and tell him to untie the horses," Alpheo shouted, spotting his friend in the flow and noticing his other one had disappeared. "And search the whole area for any more of them. We will want every animal we can lay hands on."
Clio nodded and took off at a sprint.
Alpheo moved through the chaos and watched it unfold with something close to pleasure. Slaves dashed in every direction, voices ringing out whenever somebody turned up something worth having.
"Over here! Food! There's food!" one man shouted, waving a loaf above his head while already tearing at it with his teeth, having not eaten in a day and having no intention of waiting another minute.
"Weapons here!" another called, ducking into a tent and emerging with a mail shirt over one arm and a helmet under the other.
The camp filled up with something Alpheo had never seen in it before, which was hope. The slaves grinned as they rummaged, and the grins spread from one to the next, because everything they carried out of those tents was theirs.
If a man went looking for something other than smiles, however, he did not have to look far.
"Help! Someone, please, help me!" a woman cried, and the plea broke off mid word as a blade found her.
It was a good thing, Alpheo thought, that they had heeded him. He had feared that men who had spent years in chains would spend their first free hour among the cooks rather than the supplies. Apparently the knowledge that an army was somewhere out there on the road had a way of making every lower part go limp and quiet.
He felt no guilt at any of it. The disgusted looks of the people who had passed him every day of his life were still fresh enough in his mind. A lifetime of scorn and rejection, freely given, never once questioned by anyone handing it out.
So why should he trouble himself now with mercy? Had one hand ever been extended to him?
No. Not one.
And now he was the one holding the knife.
So when his blade went through the air and into the soft flesh of a man's throat, a soldier lying with a bone standing out through his leg and moaning about it, Alpheo felt nothing at all. No guilt. No pleasure. No pain.
He just yanked the mail off the corpse and went about wearing on his own body.
All that mattered was surviving another day. By whatever means the day required.